Pia Akerman
The Australian
October 26, 2013 12:00AM
THERE'S a special sense of pride that comes from representing your country and Victor Wright remembers it well.
In 1973, he was **** a 30-strong group of Aboriginal rugby league players who seized an opportunity to represent their country and their culture in an overseas tour, despite frowns from the rugby league establishment, which gave them only a few hundred dollars for the trip.
While the players weren't permitted to wear the green and gold on field, there was no doubt in their minds that they were representing Australia, but their claim to history has sparked a new battle between the codes.
Wright and some of his fellow surviving teammates are understandably irked by an AFL claim that their indigenous All Stars squad playing in Ireland is the first all-indigenous team to "represent a national sporting code at senior level overseas" since an Aboriginal cricket team toured England in 1868.
"The person who said that should have got his story right or dig deeper," Wright told The Weekend Australian. "To say that we were not representative is not right, not right at all."
The NRL's official historian, Terry Williams, is less diplomatic.
"They (the AFL) don't know what they're talking about," he said. "I don't know who is dreaming this up down there, thinking they can just bluster their way through and rewrite history."
The claim first emerged in July, when AFL deputy chief executive Gillon McLachlan had to defend the decision to pick an all-indigenous side for the International Rules tour.
"To the best of our knowledge, the All Stars representing the AFL in International Rules against Ireland will be the first all-indigenous team to represent a national sporting code at senior level overseas since the first cricket team toured England in 1868," McLachlan said.
The AFL now says it based its assessment on the fact that its team was representing a national sports body. "We certainly never intended any disrespect to any group," a spokesman said. "We are happy to acknowledge the rugby league players who toured New Zealand in the 1970s but stand by our comments regarding the 2013 International Rules series and the exclusive involvement of players from the senior level of our competition."
Wright, whose son Jonathan has launched a promising NRL career and plays for the Cronulla Sharks, is adamant that his team played "senior level" football, pointing to several of the players who played in the NRL's predecessor, the NSW Rugby League.
University of Newcastle conjoint professor Bob Morgan, who helped organise the trip, said the fact the team was not officially recognised by league's governing body until last year was "more about them than the calibre of the players".
"It was a totally different world then," he said. "There were still people fearful that we were trying to practise apartheid. The administrators at that time thought it was being separatist and they didn't want to be part of funding or supporting a group that was playing as an ethnic grouping."
A short article in a 1973 edition of Rugby League News describes the team's success in New Zealand, describing the tour as "the first ever by an Aboriginal team".
The team played nine games in nine days, winning seven, including a victory over Kiwi premiers Wellington Petone, the only all-Maori team they played.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/n ... 6747054175
Caught out lying again?
